This invention relates to an improved process for the growth and production of mushroom tissue by the utilization of an artificial mushroom growth and production bed and more particularly, to an improved process for the growth and production of mushroom tissue by the utilization of an artificial mushroom growth and production bed which essentially comprises providing mushroom tissue, suspending the mushroom tissue in an aqueous nutrient fermentation solution, inoculation of the mushroom tissue suspending nutrient fermentation solution into an artificial growth and production bed, ageing the nutrient fermentation inoculated bed and growing the mushroom tissue within the bed under growth conditions.
Edible mushrooms have been highly esteemed as a high class foodstuff because of their refined flavor, but at present the mushrooms are drawing one's attention on account of their nutritive qualities with demand for the foodstuff increasing year by year. Up to date, mushroom tissues have been cultivated and produced by placing the mushroom tissues into suitably cut holes in growth and production tree trunks, stems, stocks or branches cut from a tree selected from the group comprising Quercus glandulifera, Quercus serrata and chestnut trees, covering the holes with covers and suitably arranging and leaving such growth and production tree cuts in a forest or wood until the mushroom tissues will be fully grown. However, such a conventional growth and production process for mushrooms suffer from the disadvantages that areas where the process can be carried out are not readily available, that the process requires a great deal of labor and time and a relatively large space and that the time for harvest for mushrooms is limited to only two seasons of a year. Of the above-mentioned disadvantages inherent in the conventional mushroom growth and production process, the disadvantages in connection with area and space are most serious because the prior art process for growing and producing mushrooms has to be carried out at a mountainous area where trees suitably used for the process are available and the process requires a spacious land area. In order to eliminate such disadvantages inherent in the prior art growth and production process of mushrooms, of late a variety of improved processes for the growth and production of mushrooms which employs the so-called artificial mushroom growth and production bed instead of the conventional tree medium have been proposed and actually employed.
All of such processes for the growth and production of mushrooms employing the artificial growth and production bed have the disadvantages that they require a great deal of labor and a substantially long period of time for the growth and production of mushrooms though they are free of the disadvantages relating to area and space limitations.